New to Hobby and Heaps of Questions

[The Expanding Man]

Hello all, great forum!

I'm about to enter the hobby with no flying experience, but a bit of RC car experience.

My motivation is arial photography. I have a panasonic GH1 hacked for better video performance, a heap of m4/3 lenses and a Gopro Hero 3 black.

I'm about to receive a Walkera Ladybird to practice my flying chops on before I go big.

I'm keen to diy a quadcopter, I like to tinker. I've had my eye on the Oddcopter site and the build instructions seem quite fool proof.

A good choice, or would you recommend another route?

Any suggestions on a radio kit that will have some longevity?

Thanks all.

 

[ProPilotWannaBe]

Well, hmmm... Where to start...
When it comes to buying an MR you are going to get twice as many opinions as people answering... In other words... Tons!
You mentioned aerial photography, so that is goi to have to be your basic minimum criteria. You will find that not any frame, or flight computer, or gimbal, or setup, is going to be conducive towards AP. I guess I should ask the question, photography as in stills only? Or video also? As odd as it sounds, The AP term applies to both. And video from your MR is going to be a key criteria for selection. Then the next question is, which of your two cameras. You'll find endless options for the GoPro, but not as many for the GH1. So, bottom line, when looking at a setup (and I know nothing of oddcopter), you'll want to look into what others have done with regards to AP.

As for radio kit, your also going to have people in different camps. But putting brands aside for a minute, for aerial photography you will want to be looking at a transmitter with at least 8 channels, but more ideally 12 or 14, especially if you are thinking a solo person operation. If you are thinking dual person, then you can go with two 8 channels.

That said, I do aerial photography (stills and video) and I use DJI and Futaba gear. Though I do tinker (and every MR operator pretty much has to be able to tinker at this point), I prefer a more out-of-box ready setup so I can focus more on my photo/video and less on tinkering. That's why I have DJI's on an F450, F550, and an S800 (the 450 being for the GoPro). Then I have two Futaba 8FGs which come with 16 channels each. My S800 can run with a single operator, or dual (the 2nd being the camera operator).